If number 1 is true, then AI isn’t a threat. It never will go crazy and cause harm. It will just do a few harmless and quirky things. Maybe that will be the case. If it is, Kudlowsky is still wrong. Beyond that, isn’t going to solve these problems. To think that it will is moonshine. It assumes that solving complex and difficult problems are just a question of time and calculation. Sadly, the world isn’t that simple. Most of the “big problems” are big because they are moral dilemmas with no answer that doesn’t require value judgements and comparisons that simply cannot be solved via sure force of intellect.
As far as two you say, “It can, however, make evaluations/comparisons of its human wannabe-overlords and find them very much inferior, infinitely slower and generally rather of dubious reliability.” You are just describing it being human and having human emotions. It is making value and moral judgements on its own. That is the definition of being human and having moral agency.
Then you go on to say “If the future holds something of a Rationality-rating akin to a Credit rating, we’d be lucky to score above Junk status; the vast majority of our needs, wants, drives and desires are all based on wanting to be loved by mommy and dreading death. Not much logic to be found there. One can be sure it will treat us as a joke, at least in terms of intellectual prowess and utility.”
That is the sort of laughable nonsense that only intellectuals believe. There is no such that as something being “objectively reasonable” in any ultimate sense. Reason is just the process by which you think. That process can produce any result you want provided you feed into it the right assumptions. What seems irrational to you, can be totally rational to me if I start with different assumptions or different perceptions of the world than you do. You can reason yourself into any conclusion. They are called rationalization. The idea that there is an objective thing called “reason” which gives a single path to the truth is 8th grade philosophy and why Ayn Rand is a half wit. The world just doesn’t work that way. A super AI is no more or less “reasonable” than anyone else. And its conclusions are no more or less reasonable or true than any other conclusions. To pretend it is is just faith based worship of reason and computation as some sort of ultimate truth. It isn’t.
“The chances that a genuinely rule- and law-based society is more fair, efficient and generally superior to current human societies is 1”
A society with rules tempered by values and human judgement is fair and just to the extent human societies can be. A society that is entirely rule based tempered by no judgement of values is monstrous. Every rule has a limit, a point where applying it because unjust and wrong. If it were just a question of having rules and applying them to everything, ethical debate would have ended thousands of years ago. It isn’t that simple. Ethics lie in the middle, rules are needed right up to the point they are not. Sadly, the categorical imperative didn’t answer the issue.
That there is no such thing as being 100% objective/rational does not mean one can’t be more or less rational than some other agent. Listen. Why do you have a favorite color? How come you prefer leather seats? In fact, why did you have tea this morning instead of coffee? You have no idea. Even if you do (say, you ran out of coffee) you still don’t know why you decided to drink tea instead of running down to the store to get some coffee instead.
We are so irrational that we don’t actually even know ourselves why most of the things we think, believe, want or prefer are such things. The very idea of liking is irrational. And no, you don’t “like” a Mercedes more than a Yugo because it’s safer—that’s a fact, not a matter of opinion. A “machine” can also give preference to a Toyota over a Honda but it certainly wouldn’t do so because it likes the fabric of the seats, or the fact the tail lights converge into the bumper so nicely. It will list a bunch of facts and parameters and calculate that the Toyota is the thing it will “choose”.
We humans delude ourselves that this is how we make decisions but this is of course complete nonsense. Naturally, some objective aspects are considered like fuel economy, safety, features and options… but the vast majority of people end up with a car that far outstrips their actual, objective transportation needs, and most of that part is really about status, how having a given car makes you feel compared to others in your social environment and what “image” you (believe you) project on those whose opinion matters most to you. An AI will have none of these wasteful obsessive compulsions.
Look—be honest with yourself Mr. Kluge. Please. Slow down, think, feel inside. Ask yourself—what makes you want… what makes you desire. You will, if you know how to listen… very soon discover none of that is guided by rational, dispassionate arguments or objective, logical realities. Now imagine an AI/machine that is even half as smart as the average Joe, but is free from all those subjective distractions, emotions and anxieties. It will accomplish 10x the amount of work in half the time. At least.
If number 1 is true, then AI isn’t a threat. It never will go crazy and cause harm. It will just do a few harmless and quirky things. Maybe that will be the case. If it is, Kudlowsky is still wrong. Beyond that, isn’t going to solve these problems. To think that it will is moonshine. It assumes that solving complex and difficult problems are just a question of time and calculation. Sadly, the world isn’t that simple. Most of the “big problems” are big because they are moral dilemmas with no answer that doesn’t require value judgements and comparisons that simply cannot be solved via sure force of intellect.
As far as two you say, “It can, however, make evaluations/comparisons of its human wannabe-overlords and find them very much inferior, infinitely slower and generally rather of dubious reliability.” You are just describing it being human and having human emotions. It is making value and moral judgements on its own. That is the definition of being human and having moral agency.
Then you go on to say “If the future holds something of a Rationality-rating akin to a Credit rating, we’d be lucky to score above Junk status; the vast majority of our needs, wants, drives and desires are all based on wanting to be loved by mommy and dreading death. Not much logic to be found there. One can be sure it will treat us as a joke, at least in terms of intellectual prowess and utility.”
That is the sort of laughable nonsense that only intellectuals believe. There is no such that as something being “objectively reasonable” in any ultimate sense. Reason is just the process by which you think. That process can produce any result you want provided you feed into it the right assumptions. What seems irrational to you, can be totally rational to me if I start with different assumptions or different perceptions of the world than you do. You can reason yourself into any conclusion. They are called rationalization. The idea that there is an objective thing called “reason” which gives a single path to the truth is 8th grade philosophy and why Ayn Rand is a half wit. The world just doesn’t work that way. A super AI is no more or less “reasonable” than anyone else. And its conclusions are no more or less reasonable or true than any other conclusions. To pretend it is is just faith based worship of reason and computation as some sort of ultimate truth. It isn’t.
“The chances that a genuinely rule- and law-based society is more fair, efficient and generally superior to current human societies is 1”
A society with rules tempered by values and human judgement is fair and just to the extent human societies can be. A society that is entirely rule based tempered by no judgement of values is monstrous. Every rule has a limit, a point where applying it because unjust and wrong. If it were just a question of having rules and applying them to everything, ethical debate would have ended thousands of years ago. It isn’t that simple. Ethics lie in the middle, rules are needed right up to the point they are not. Sadly, the categorical imperative didn’t answer the issue.
That there is no such thing as being 100% objective/rational does not mean one can’t be more or less rational than some other agent. Listen. Why do you have a favorite color? How come you prefer leather seats? In fact, why did you have tea this morning instead of coffee? You have no idea. Even if you do (say, you ran out of coffee) you still don’t know why you decided to drink tea instead of running down to the store to get some coffee instead.
We are so irrational that we don’t actually even know ourselves why most of the things we think, believe, want or prefer are such things. The very idea of liking is irrational. And no, you don’t “like” a Mercedes more than a Yugo because it’s safer—that’s a fact, not a matter of opinion. A “machine” can also give preference to a Toyota over a Honda but it certainly wouldn’t do so because it likes the fabric of the seats, or the fact the tail lights converge into the bumper so nicely. It will list a bunch of facts and parameters and calculate that the Toyota is the thing it will “choose”.
We humans delude ourselves that this is how we make decisions but this is of course complete nonsense. Naturally, some objective aspects are considered like fuel economy, safety, features and options… but the vast majority of people end up with a car that far outstrips their actual, objective transportation needs, and most of that part is really about status, how having a given car makes you feel compared to others in your social environment and what “image” you (believe you) project on those whose opinion matters most to you. An AI will have none of these wasteful obsessive compulsions.
Look—be honest with yourself Mr. Kluge. Please. Slow down, think, feel inside. Ask yourself—what makes you want… what makes you desire. You will, if you know how to listen… very soon discover none of that is guided by rational, dispassionate arguments or objective, logical realities. Now imagine an AI/machine that is even half as smart as the average Joe, but is free from all those subjective distractions, emotions and anxieties. It will accomplish 10x the amount of work in half the time. At least.